The Garden Report

This year has been a very strange year in Oregon. We had an extended "winter", a long cold spring and a summer that was as tardy as a schoolboy playing hooky. I complained, ranted and blogged about it to vent my weather frustration.

Consequently, agriculture in our little valley is way behind the usual schedule. Farmers are still picking cherries now in August when they should be gearing up for Bartlett pears. I did a morning walk around my own garden and this is what I found.

Nothing illustrates the late timing of our garden endeavors this year then this:

August 6, our first zucchini ready to pick.

We still have an abundance of lettuce that was planted last spring.It hasn't even bolted yet.

My patch of basil, started from seed the first week of June, is six inches tall.

The garlic, planted last November, is finally starting to turn yellow. I covered it yesterday to keep the irrigation water off of it. Maybe it will be harvested by September??

The tomatoes are coming along. The results of the experiment with the wire wall still remains to be seen but so far so good. I found myself tying the plants to the wire and not just weaving the branches in and out. All the plants are early varieties like Early Girl.

Except I planted a few San Marzanos that I found in a market. We'll see if anything at all will come of them.

Look who else was doing her morning garden rounds.

The sinner beat me to the first ripening tomato!!

The blueberries show promise of a good harvest but they are very late in ripening.

We got absolutely no cherry crop this year. The very day that the cherries finally ripened, a flock of birds swooped in and ate every one. It only took them one day to clean the tree off, leaving us the pits!

We have two Golden Delicious apple trees. One is full of apples, the other is bare. What???